Who Are You? (16 page)

‘What do you want, Juliet?’

‘My life back. I want to feel safe when I go to sleep. I don’t want to spend my life walking on eggshells wondering when I might be attacked by you. I don’t want to have to worry every time I leave Ben alone with you that you’ll harm him. God, just think what you’ve already done to me, Alex. Do you think this is what I wanted? What I planned for? What do you think I fucking want? I want a life. I want out. With Ben.’

Alex knows it’s the adrenalin talking. That’s what’s making her brave; and no one knows more about adrenalin than him. Fight or flight, and she’s pumped up and ready to fight. But there’s no way she can win. Not against him.

‘You can go, but you’re not taking Ben.’

‘I’m going to prove you unfit. I’m going to let the world see what you’ve done to me, and then no one will ever allow you to have Ben. You’re violent. Dangerous. You need help, Alex.’

‘And that’s what you’ve been trying to do, isn’t it – “help”

me?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘All your little games. Your DVDs, Ben’s gun. All your petty little ruses that you think will wind me up. Clearly you don’t think they’re working because otherwise you wouldn’t want to up the stakes like this, would you?’

‘Stakes? Games? I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ She manages to get to her feet and then she walks past him into the bathroom and stands in front of the mirror, inspecting the damage. Alex looks at his watch. It’s still dark outside, but it’s almost seven o’clock. He pulls on his boxer shorts, and then jeans and a T-shirt. The heating must be just about to kick in, as the house is still hanging on to the cold of the night. He pulls a jersey off the chair. It’s his Christmas jersey which was bought to entertain Ben. Ludicrously inappropriate in the circumstances, but sod it, it’s to hand.

He goes and stands in the bathroom doorway, and notices that Juliet isn’t doing anything to reduce the swelling, like holding a wet towel over the bruising, like mopping up the blood from her hair. Watching her, it’s more like she’s checking her make-up to make sure everything is in place.

‘I’ll make your excuses for the party. I’ll say you’ve got flu …
or maybe food poisoning from your cooking.’

‘Fuck off, you’ll do no such thing. I want everyone to see this.’

Sometimes Juliet really can be her own worst enemy.

*    *    *    *    *

Juliet doesn’t know how much time has passed since Alex did this unspeakable thing to her. She wasn’t expecting it. She was far too busy thinking how he would have to grovel and apologize and be ashamed in front of their friends. How could she not have thought it through properly, crowing about the fact that she would show everyone? If she’d just kept quiet would he still have done this? Alex: always the one to be in control. It was weirdly interesting – stepping outside of herself – watching him coldly and efficiently binding her up. First of all he came up behind her while she was examining her face in the bathroom mirror. He raised his hands to her hair and she thought he was going to be gentle, that he was perhaps going to stroke the place where her hair had come out. In fact, she flinched, waiting for his touch, afraid that it would hurt. But somehow, so quickly, he seemed to have got hold of her wrist, and then the other, and suddenly they were both tied behind her with a dressing gown cord. She turned around to face him, too surprised to speak, and then he picked her up and carried her into the bedroom and dropped her onto the bed. He took his tie from the chair and got hold of her legs. She struggled and tried to kick him but the next thing she knew he was lying across her legs so that she couldn’t move at all, and like a magician had her ankles bound together before she could struggle once more. She wanted to scream, but her throat was too sore, her voice too hoarse. ‘Alex … you fucking untie me right now …’ That was when he picked up his cast off sock and shoved it in her mouth. Her tights were lying on the bedside chair so he used those as a gag over the top of the sock. She was crying but quickly realized her nose would get blocked and then she wouldn’t be able to breathe at all. She could only plead with her eyes but she noticed that Alex avoided looking at her all the time he was about his work. His face was set into an expressionless mask. Next he went to her drawers and rummaged around until he brought out a bundle of silk scarves. He used these to retie her, presumably so that she wouldn’t get marks on her wrists and ankles. Typical Alex – methodical and thorough.

They had held their Boxing Day drinks party for the first time the previous year and invited all the suitable neighbours and a few other London friends to join them. Today Juliet is expecting they will get around forty people. She wonders if some won’t turn up because of the Caroline Hunt episode. Perhaps they will be boycotted, a no-show from everyone. She also wonders what Geraldine and Alex will do about the canapés, and sorting out the glasses and generally doing all the things that she would do if she was there.

Funny what the mind can do. Here she is, with a gag in her mouth and her hands and feet bound, and she’s wondering about the bloody drinks party and whether her guests will be all right. She feels as though she could be floating above her own life. Instead of lying here bound up, she could be lying here dead. When Alex had his hands around her neck she really thought she was dying. White spots were swimming in front of her eyes and she was actually thinking, this is it. This is how it ends. And ‘poor Ben’. Ben not remembering her. Would he remember her, only aged five? Alex would presumably do all he could to erase her existence from Ben’s life. And she also thought, ‘How stupid.’ She must have somehow lashed out in her sleep. Perhaps a muscular spasm, the sort you have when you dream you’re falling off a building and the sudden jolt that wakes you. But she doesn’t remember the sudden jolt, she only remembers the hands around her neck and the lights swimming in her eyes, and the feeling that she was about to die. This isn’t the first time that she’s been afraid he will kill her. Each episode was so much more violent than the one before that she couldn’t really imagine how it could get worse. But every time she would be left thinking, how was it possible to survive
this
one? What it came down to was just a slip of the hand, a moment’s pressure, a kick too many or in the wrong place. A bang on the head to a weak point. The difference between life and death might be just the tiniest hair’s breadth. Like the smallest pressure on a trigger.

And Alex would probably still be holding the drinks party if she were dead, pretending that she was unwell upstairs so that he could dispose of her body later on. But she’s not dead. Not yet, anyway. OK, so all deaths are only a matter of time, but hers could be along in quite a short time. God, is she going mad?

She supposes that Alex will easily explain away her absence. Food poisoning will be the most obvious excuse. But he can’t keep her up here forever – alive or dead – because even Geraldine will notice it’s a bit strange that she’s not putting in an appearance. And she might pop upstairs to see if Juliet is all right.

But until he comes back, there’s nothing she can do other than lie still and think about how she will get him back for this, if she survives.

When you’ve lived with someone for several years you learn the little things that can really piss the other person off. The really silly, infinitesimally inconsequential things like the fact that Alex can’t stand it when Juliet squeezes the toothpaste tube from the top. He uses a toothbrush handle to squash the contents up the tube, so when Juliet’s
really
annoyed with him she just puts a great fat thumb print into the thick lump at the top of the tube and sends it back down. He can’t stand things being moved. If you so much as touch the brushes on his chest of drawers he goes completely mental. Totally OCD. He won’t rinse the basin after he’s spat his toothpaste into it, or he’ll leave a ring of shaved whiskers stuck to it. All petty, normal, domestic stuff. But if Juliet should leave a sock, or a bra – or, God forbid – a pair of pants lying around on the floor, then she gets the Alex ‘not amused’ treatment. And the kitchen? The fridge? Anyone would think he’d done a fucking degree in food health and safety. It’s maybe the fact of his fastidiousness, the way he always likes things around him to be just so, the controlling, OCD part of his nature, that has led Juliet to believe that whatever little things he does that he knows annoy her, are done on purpose. Maybe if she hadn’t said, a million times, ‘D’you know what, Alex, when you’ve emptied the ice dispenser it would be
really
nice if you could refill the water,’ he would have done it. The crumbs in the honey pot. The butter crud in the Marmite. Never being arsed to take the bottles to the bottle bank. Putting things into the recycling bin dirty, so that she has to take them out again and wash them up. There are so many other things that really irritate Juliet. Like the glass he uses for his whisky. Does he, for instance, choose the one that goes in the dishwasher, or does he choose the one that has to be washed by hand because it won’t fit? And is
he
the one who’s likely to wash it up? And, God … when he’s poured the whisky and dribbled it onto the polished table, does he wipe it up? You would think, wouldn’t you, that Alex, who’s so bloody meticulous, wouldn’t want to ruin one of their prettiest antique tables?

And why the fuck can’t he take Ben up to the swings and slides at Palewell Park just once in his life? Because he thinks it doesn’t look macho enough? He’s your son. She is inwardly hissing at him behind the prison of her gag, winding herself up into a frenzy of malice and vengeance. Oh, calm breathing … calm … in … out … in … out …

He did actually return to the bedroom once before the party. To remove his Christmas jersey. Juliet thought, naturally, that he was coming to let her go. So sure was she that he was coming to untie her that she was busy rehearsing the torrent of verbal abuse that she would pour on him. But once again he acted as though she wasn’t even in the room, like she was part of the furniture, a lump on the bed. Pretending that he couldn’t hear her squeaking as hard as she could behind his hideous sock, even though she now knew that too much squeaking would only result in pushing the sock further towards the back of her throat. The best way to deal with the torture was to lie as quietly as possible and almost reach a state of calmness, a meditative state. Which was a good state in which to plot. But when he closed the door once again, Juliet’s anger went way up into the danger zone. Her whole body shook, not with the cold, but because her emotions were so tautly stretched the tension was just too much. How could he do this to her? And what else could he do to her? It was the way he became so detached and bereft of any emotion. Like Alex had left the building. There she goes again, expecting her husband to be Alex. How many more times does she have to tell herself that Alex, the man she married, the one she fell in love with, doesn’t exist any more. The man who tied her up is the man who came back. The man who has been slipping into such a dehumanized state that he is incapable of compassion is her husband.

So how will the conversation go then? ‘Oh yes, the party. So sorry I wasn’t there. No, no, I didn’t actually have food poisoning, I was
actually
tied up by Alex. Yep. That’s right. Tied up – oh, and gagged too. Yes. I did say
gagged.
So I couldn’t move, couldn’t shout out. What’s that you say? Kinky? Sex game? No, darling. Not a game, but abuse.’

The thing about violence in a marriage – the term everyone uses is domestic abuse, apparently, Juliet’s read all about this – is that the victims don’t want to tell anyone. It’s shameful. Really. Juliet knows this. It goes against everything you’ve ever thought you’d do, or whatever you’ve previously thought that other people ‘should’ do. Leave him. Just get out. Don’t be a pathetic victim. What’s your problem?

Juliet thinks that part of it is the admission that you are a victim. And that’s not nice. And then the other part is that you
love
this person. After the event, the abuse, it all gets so confusing, because the person who hurt you turns into the person who comforts you and it’s almost like the more you’re hurt, the more vulnerable you become and the more desperate you are to be loved and safe. They call it the honeymoon period after the beating. The time when he’s apologetic and can’t seem to do enough for you. The time when he tells you he’ll never hurt you again, he’ll never leave you. He hates himself. God, he can hardly live with himself. He loves you more than life itself … blah blah blah … and it’s what you want to hear, for Christ’s sake. And what’s the option? You say, Well actually, mate, I’m off. I’m taking the child/children and I’m leaving you. OK? Never see you again. Right. See you. Bye.

‘They’ say that the most dangerous time is when you leave him. That’s when you’re most likely to be murdered. The statistics – Juliet can quote loads, by the way – are that three, yes three women die at the hands of their husbands or partners every week. Every bloody week.

And he’s told her he’ll kill her. Look at her, here, right now. Tied up with a fucking gag in her mouth. This is a man who is not just issuing a meaningless threat. She knows he means it. He’s crazy enough to do it.

CHAPTER

11

Alex barely thinks about Juliet upstairs. He has honed the ability to shut out unpleasant things in order to function efficiently. Shit happens, and you just deal with it. Move on. Moreover, he does not give a moment’s thought to how he will deal with her later on. He and Geraldine have been doing the best they can getting ready for this bloody party. There’s a load of Waitrose frozen stuff that Juliet’s obviously bought especially for it, and between them they can probably follow the instructions which basically run along the lines of remove packaging and shove in oven. When he announced that Juliet had been sick all night, possibly with food poisoning, and wanted to be left alone to sleep, Geraldine started to run through, course by course, exactly what they’d eaten yesterday, what Juliet could have had which the others hadn’t, and how long these things took to work through the system. She’d come to the conclusion that it must have been a dangerous bit of pork meat in the stuffing. Alex agreed, and the conversation then moved on to the dangers of stuffing a bird, and how it was terribly difficult to get everything cooked through, and so Geraldine always cooked hers separately. In future, she decided, Juliet must be persuaded to follow suit. ‘But I know how difficult it is for a mother-in-law to tell her daughter-in-law how to cook,’ she said.